


Yarrow

by JoAsakura



Series: The Language of Memory [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7292071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months before Wormwood, Reaper gets a phone call from an unexpected source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yarrow

It's six months before he and Jack looked each other in the eyes for the first time since they both, reportedly, died.

Reaper is sitting, dark and still, at the edge of a late-summer's field. Somewhere in the distance, is the sound of a roadway, of humanity. But here, it's just him and this field.

It's the exact opposite of a target-rich environment and for the moment, it's what he needs.

The sun is heavy and golden and the air is thick with the sweet scent of the white flowers spread across it and the sound of insects and birds buzzing and chirping furiously in the last light of day. He rolls a stalk of the flowers in his clawed fingers, and watches an unwanted Wikipedia entry scroll up in the corner of his HUD. (Alternate names: Death Flower, Devil's Nettle, Soldier's Woundwort. Symbolic Meanings: War. Everlasting Love. This last makes sense because love ends up killing you just as dead as a bullet and he coughs back a bitter laugh.)

When Gabriel Reyes was little and frail, his abuela would make tea out of it, tut-tutting how sometimes traditional medicine was just as good as anything else. He never could understand how something that smelled so sweet could taste so bitter, "but that's how you know it's working, flacito. The better something is for you, the worse it tastes."

(I eat souls now, grandma. They must be really good for me.) He thinks, flopping back into the tall grass like a large, dead owl, staring up at the sun through the mask's HUD. When his comms buzz and he doesn't recognise the number, it's no real surprise.

In his line of work, not many clients exactly call from their home phones. When it's Talon, sometimes he just lets it ring, because, while they're useful, he's got no great love for them. And once in a while, it's a wrong number. He likes those. The stoner in Stockholm with his existential thoughts on life and death while trying to order carry out. The depressed kid in Kansas City who was just dialing numbers in the hopes that someone, anyone, would listen to her.

And he did, as comforting as a Reaper could possibly be while putting a bullet in a man's skull.

So, he lets it pick up, half-hoping it's some moron misdialing their local pizza shop.

Silence, then: "Reyes." The voice is just shy of guttural and Reaper sits straight up.

"I should have killed you on Gibraltar, monkey." He hisses. Still, he's impressed Winston managed to track him down. 

"You could have. But you sent the minions to do it instead. You knew I could handle them." The ape on the other end muses. 

"Maybe I was just letting them soften you up for me." Reaper doesn't bother to ask how Winston knows who he is, mainly because he knows it will drive him... Well.. (He clears his throat to hide the laugh he feels building at the very stupid pun)

"You don't want to know how I found you?" Winston asks and Reaper grins in the dark confines of his mask. 

"I don't care.' (Which is a lie. He does, but he's thousands of miles away and imagining the irritated look on Winston's face is a mild pleasure.) "What do you want?"

"I thought you were hunting former overwatch personnel because of revenge. But then I saw a pattern to your targets. You're looking for something. You're looking for whoever was behind the explosion in Geneva, aren't you, Gabriel?" Winston adds his name at the end like the sharp end of a needle. "You still wear your token. It pinged when I ran the recall protocol."

Reaper reaches down to the metal symbol hanging from his belt, sun glinting off the battered circle. He hadn't even noticed the small, blinking light before. "An oversight."

"You wear it upside down. At first, I wondered if that was some sort of ridiculous satanic cross reference. Then I remembered. To hang a flag upside down is an international sign of distress."

"I'm hanging up in thirty seconds if you don't get to the point, monkey." Reaper lets it drop, his other hand spasming, crushing the flowers in his grip.

"I want to know what happened as well, Reyes. And you and Jack are the only ones who might know." Winston rumbles.

"What a shame both your star witnesses are dead." Reaper flicks his gaze up to the call end button in the HUD, feeling an old ache.

"Soldier: 76." Winston's voice freezes the motion and Reaper draws his knees up, feeling the guns shift under his coat.

"You're saying that... Vigilante... Is Jack." He knows it's true the moment he says it. He's seen the man in videos. And had discounted it. Jack was dead. Jack was gone. He had to live his unlife knowing that and... "Fuck you, hanging up."

"I'll send you coordinates for a meet." Winston blithely says over him. "Come alone or don't come at all. But if you care about what happened at all, I'll see you in a few days... Gabriel."

The coordinates pop up in his tactical display just as he hangs up and Reaper flops back down into the grass. If he could still get sick, the churning mess of hate and hope inside of him would have done it. But he only looks at the Overwatch token one last time, before making a call.

"Widowmaker, how do you feel about taking a little vacation?"


End file.
